Mystery publishing, from idea to bookshelf

December 27, 2015

2014 submission statistics

In 2014, I submitted 118 bundles of poems, collaborations, poetry comics, diagram poems, essays, and short stories to literary journals. 30 journals accepted my work, which makes for a 25% acceptance rate. I received 73 rejections. Fifteen journals never replied.

Compared to the statistics for 2013, 2012, and earlier, these numbers are okay -- not the best, not the worst. But it was actually a GREAT year because I submitted two full-length poetry manuscripts and both were accepted, one at Unicorn Press and the other at Red Hen. There Was an Old Woman came out this month, and Suicide Hotline Hold Music will come out in April 2016. See my next blog post for a gauchely honest overview of the contracts (or non-contracts) for all my poetry books.

(I can't crunch the numbers for a year of submitting until the year after that year, because many journals take a year to respond to submissions. So that's why I'm giving the 2014 statistics at the very end of 2015.)